Monterey Bay Aquarium
Silicon Valley pioneer David Packard had two daughters who studied marine biology, and they saw to it that an aquarium celebrating and studying the marine life of Monterey Bay became Read more…
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Improving Water Quality with Market Incentives
In 1983, a group of flyfishers calling themselves Oregon Trout started working for new water laws that would allow fishermen to buy a right to water and then keep it Read more…
Land Trusts Take Off
Land trusts, or conservancies, are private nonprofits that protect land directly by owning it. Though their roots go back to the 1890s, in the latest generation land trusts have become Read more…
Central Park Conservancy
Starting in the 1960s, Central Park began a long decline. Once-emerald lawns were trampled to bare dirt. Ineffective policing and homeless policies allowed vagrants and gangs to take over. Graffiti Read more…
Free Market Environmentalism
As far back as the 1930s, pioneer conservationists like Aldo Leopold argued that in a country like the U.S. built around private property and markets, it is important to find Read more…
Citizen-led Bluebird Recovery
The bluebird, an American favorite, faced disaster when the non-native house sparrow took over much of its habitat. Both birds are cavity nesters, and the sparrows will often kill bluebirds Read more…
Early Use of Conservation Easements in Montana
Montana Land Reliance was founded in 1978 by Barbara Rusmore and Christina Torgrimson, who wanted to preserve Montana’s beautiful outdoor scenery and “provide permanent protection for private lands that are Read more…
Yawkey Wildlife Center
Almost exactly midway between Myrtle Beach and Charleston in South Carolina is a 24,000-acre beachfront refuge and resting spot considered one of the best in North America—but for transient birds Read more…
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
In 1918 Wallace Pratt became the first geologist to work for Humble Oil (forerunner to ExxonMobil). He and several colleagues created scientific ways to find oil with less guesswork, and Read more…
Saving the Winged Cheetah
The peregrine falcon is the fastest creature on earth. When it spots prey with its piercing eyesight, it shrieks down out of the sky at more than 200 miles an Read more…
Ordway Prairie Preserves
Katharine Ordway’s father took a struggling company called Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing and turned it into 3M. She eventually inherited part of his fortune, and used it to buy and Read more…
Francis Beidler Forest Sanctuary
Francis Beidler was a Chicago businessman who owned the Santee River Cypress Company. By 1905 he had stopped timbering in swamps he possessed near Charleston, South Carolina, having decided it Read more…
Henry Doorly Zoo
The Omaha Zoo was a sleepy little city-run affair, like hundreds of others, when in 1963 the widow of the publisher of the local newspaper gave $750,000 to improve the Read more…
Kentucky’s Floracliff
Mary Wharton completed a doctorate in botany at the University of Michigan, then moved to Kentucky to put her knowledge to work near her family home. She led the Georgetown Read more…
Virgin Islands National Park
In the 1940s, Laurance Rockefeller, grandson of the famous scion, began exploring the Caribbean islands with his wife, Mary, in their boat Dauntless. St. John was one of three islands Read more…
Humane Society of the United States
In the half-century or so after the civil war, a “humane” movement grew up which encouraged kindness to animals, compassion for humans, and a reverence for life. Albert Schweitzer’s 1952 Read more…
The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy has more than 1 million contributing members and is the largest environmental charity in the U.S. measured by revenue (nearly a billion dollars in 2015, mostly donations Read more…
John Olin Launches Scientific Game Management
In the 1940s and ’50s, as sporting game like deer, waterfowl, and turkeys became rare amid post-war hunting and building booms, John Olin had an idea. Wildlife could be replenished Read more…
Bernheim Arboretum & Research Forest
Isaac Bernheim was a German immigrant to Kentucky who went to work as a peddler and eventually became a wealthy distiller. Grateful for his good fortune, he gave Bernheim Arboretum Read more…
Grand Teton National Park
Almost from the time that Yellowstone was established as our first national park, there was interest in extending its boundaries south to include the toothy Grand Teton peaks and the Read more…